Participant

Question

ERROR: Cannot open the document. You may not have permission or the document may be open already.

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
August 12, 2025
3 replies
720 views

Hey all,
Hoping to gain insight and best practice for freelancing and collaborating on projects.

With collaborated projects with other designers and I've noticed this error show:

"Cannot open the document: "X". You may not have permission or the document may be open already. For multi-user access, close the file and set the file properties to read-only in Windows Explorer."

To give a little more insight on the process, usually other designers will share their Google drive link where I download the files and continue the project. I save the project to my One drive and work on it from there - there has been no issues with the work files. Once ready to hand back over, I just copy these files from my One drive back to their Google drive. It seems that this error showed once I copied the file back over to their drive.

Is there anyway to open the Indesign file from my One Drive without having to change to Read-Only? As sometimes I may need to go back in to edit. Copying the work file to my desktop for every project is pain so wondering if there's another way around this.

Adobe Plan: cloud standard on Windows 11

thanks!

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Firefly_2025,

I hope expert's suggestions helped. If the .idlk lock file is not present, please try downloading the InDesign file directly to your local drive and opening it from there to confirm if the issue is related to working from OneDrive or Google Drive. Also, let me know if this happens with all shared files or only specific ones, and the exact version of InDesign you're using.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

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Firefly_2025Author

Participant

Hi @Abhishek Rao ,
Unfortunately no .idlk file is present. When copying the file onto my desktop, I am able to open and work on the file no issues. I just wanted to know if there was a workaround and if possible to work straight from OneDrive as it interrupts workflow and file management.

I will keep testing to see if this occurs with more than just one file.

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Firefly_2025,

Thanks for confirming that the file opens fine from your desktop. InDesign works best with files saved locally, as network drives like OneDrive or Google Drive can sometimes cause permission or syncing conflicts. If you want to work directly from OneDrive, try pausing sync while the file is open and resuming it after you close the file, which may help prevent the error. Also, please share the exact InDesign version and let me know if you see this with other shared files too.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

Look if an undeleted lock file is in the same folder as your INDD file is. Delete it.

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Firefly_2025Author

Participant

Hey @Willi Adelberger , thanks! Unfortunately there's no locked file that I can see. I also have the setting "show hidden items" turned on and still no file.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

the lock file will have the .idlk file extension

kglad

Community Expert

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from cc desktop">

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Firefly_2025Author

Participant

Thanks!

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